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Suggestion All tools used with Cerberus, should be written in Cerberus

Darkhog

New member
Joined
Nov 10, 2017
Messages
43
Yes, including the IDE. If there is some language/library deficiency that makes impossible to convert one of the tools into CX code (why font generation for mojo/mojo2 needs to be written in BMAX for example?), the appropriate module should be developed/language improved.

This way not only we'll get an amazing general purpose language (though with keeping the focus on the games), but would also make the tool more marketable, as in, "Look, we've done all of this with just CerberusX, which means that you can AS WELL make with it anything you want".

Which in turn would bring more developers, some of which may even volunteer to work on Cerberus itself.

By writing all the tools in Cerberus itself, we would find all the possible weak spots in it and fix them. Because currently, despite lack of OOP, BlitzMax still can do more than Cerberus can. Even its IDE is written in BMAX. And Cerberus depends on BMAX to do its build process (mojo font generation) too - what if Brucey gets bored of developing BMAX-NG and it stops being compatible with Windows/newer versions of Linux? Not because of simple ABI incompatibility, because then it just can be recompiled to use newer libraries, but when a library decide to retire a function BMAX relies on?

By doing all the tooling in Cerberus itself, the tools would depend only on Cerberus, so as long as it is being maintained, the tools will all work fine. Not to mention all the module/language improvement it would bring in.
 
Definitely not the IDE. I may try the font generation thing, however I need a way to render from a TTF font (or pixel FON font) and I'm not good with C/C++. When rendering from FON/TTF will be added, I'll gladly convert makefont.bmx to Cerberus.

//edit: Are any other tools that aren't Ted that would need such conversion? I've never written an IDE and wouldn't want to start with Cerberus, because it would be simply awful code, besides I'd need a GUI lib first (a thing that I plan to tackle on top of Mojo, thanks to whoever made the text input example, by the way).
 
Okay, so except Ted itself, only makefont scripts, right? Well, I'd need a TTF support to port them to Cerberus, so in case @dawlane reads this and have some time to do it, it would be great if its added. Currently I'm working on a better state machine example than the one provided with Cerberus, next thing I'll be working on will be that GUI lib I've mentioned earlier (which I want to make fully skinable).

Anyway, the TTF/FON support would benefit everyone as not every game needs bitmap fonts and the TTF fonts have that nice advantage over bitmap fonts that they're scalable without a loss in quality. And this will also enable me to port makefont to Cerberus and get rid of BMAX dependency.

The GUI module will in turn enable someone capable of writing IDEs to make a Ted replacement. Ideally it'd be best if a module for using native GUI would be developed (similar to MaxGUI), but I'll live if it would just "live" inside a mojo window as with ability to skin elements you could make it look like a normal app anyway.
 
I would rather see CX strong in one area (cross platform gfx/audio, more targets, stronger integration, better integration) than average in other domains.

But it is open source so... whatever :)
 
@Darkhog - You may want to look at JungleGUI as a start or just for inspiration https://github.com/ziggybcn/junglegui. Then there was another GUI named SimpleGUI then changed to Challenger GUI created by Chrisc2977 , can't remember if he ever released any source code but he did take it pretty far, here is part of the old discussion http://wasted.nz/posts.php?topic=202643 and then it was changed again to My GUI with a discussion here http://wasted.nz/posts.php?topic=205243. Also one named EasyGUI referenced here http://wasted.nz/posts.php?topic=202326. There were other frameworks that included more game oriented GUIs like Phoenix GUI, Playniax, Diddy and a few others that are probably outside what you are thinking of to create a full IDE with. Since Ziggy is visiting the Cerberus X site, maybe he could comment on JungleGUI?
 
>> the appropriate module should be developed/language improved.

On the other hand there is no reason for any dev not to have say python or java on his machine and if developing tools is better/easier in these language I would rather do this. For example it took me 10 minutes to write a quick java program to take a PNG image as an input and than scale with slow best quality algorithm into normal/rounded/white oval background android icons and replace those in CX android target's build folder. You will also have to rely on native libraries, so why bother with CX layer anyways?

But then again if there is passion and commitment then why not just do it :)
 
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